notioAs nite beings, we must learn and work through this distinction by

ourselves, through experience, and Gadamer warns it is mostly negative.

But we can learn, and that is not nothing. How we learn, Gadamer cannot
specify, because his hermeneutics does not aim to offer a methodology or
technology, but an account of what understanding is and how it involves
our very being. Yet he alludes to the help of dialogue and temporal
distance in sorting out the crucial difference between the true prejudices
and the false ones. Often, it is through experience and time that we come
to recognize what is appropriate and what is not. Again, there might be
some optimism in this conviction of Gadamer, but who can deny that
through time (and better insight) we learn to depart from some of our
prejudices?
He defended in 1960 the strong thesis that it is only temporal distance
that can solve the critical question of hermeneutics, i.e., the distinction to
be made between true and false prejudices. That was perhaps too
optimistic, even if it was not totally incorrect. But temporal distance can
also serve to cement false prejudices and to repress innovative, better
ideas, and it is of no effect when one has to adjudicate the value of
contemporary works
He was thus faithful to his own understanding of understanding. For
Gadamer, understanding is essentially open, but also a risk
From Gadamers threefold notion of understanding, which is summed up
in the notion of understanding as application, one can also better
understand his famous thesis on the circularity of interpretation
(TM 29899; GW1, 304). How does one go about this? Gadamers short
ans